Heather Yakin: If one is intent to kill, it isn't always by gun

In all of the recent gun debate, you might have heard a lot of statistics bandied about in support of various positions.

Comment

By Heather Yakin

recordonline.com

By Heather Yakin

Posted Feb. 6, 2013 at 2:00 AM

By Heather Yakin
Posted Feb. 6, 2013 at 2:00 AM

» Social News

In all of the recent gun debate, you might have heard a lot of statistics bandied about in support of various positions.

One of the big, gun-lobby claims is that hammers and other blunt objects are used in more homicides than rifles; and that's absolutely true. But guns overall are the weapon of choice in homicides in the United States. According to the FBI's most recent annual Crime in the United States, 67.8 percent of the 12,664 murders and nonnegligent manslaughters in 2011 were committed using firearms.

Of those, 6,220 were committed using handguns; 323 were committed with rifles and 356 with shotguns. The type of gun used wasn't specified in 1,587 cases.

Locally, our trends skew a little differently. Of the 377 murders in Orange, Ulster and Sullivan counties since 1988, the victims were shot in 158 of them, or 41.9 percent.

The numbers vary year by year, of course; in 2012, six of 10 local homicide victims died from gunfire; in 2011, two of 10 victims in eight homicides died by gun; and in 2010, an especially bad year in the City of Newburgh, 10 of the region's 17 homicide cases involved guns, not counting a 10-year-old child killed by an accidental discharge of an illegal handgun brought into the home by his mother's boyfriend.

Locally, we have been less apt to use firearms for murder than the United States as a whole. We are, however, more likely to use sharp objects, with 97 of our murder cases since 1988 — about a quarter of the cases — committed by stabbing or slashing. Fifty-seven of our slaying victims since 1988, just over 15 percent, were killed by beating or bludgeoning. Another 26 people — just under 7 percent of our homicide victims since 1988 — died from asphyxia or strangling.

Someone who wants to kill will find a way.

It might be a skillet, a knife sharpener and a blade, which Jesse Green used to kill his father, C. Daniel Green, in 2010 in Tuxedo Park. Or it might be an aluminum baseball bat, which was used by Rodney Bethea to fatally beat Eddie Gordon that same year in the Town of Newburgh.

It might be bare hands, which Tim Handel used to strangle his girlfriend Katie Connolly in 2011 before burying her in a New Windsor backyard, or the hands and feet which Yannick Evina-Ze is accused of using to fatally beat Alexis Harris last year in the City of Newburgh.

Or it might be a gun — and guns have killed enough, from 15-year-old Jeffrey Zachary, shot in front of his house in the City of Newburgh in a case of mistaken identity, to 21-year-old Randy Kizer, fatally shot in 2011 in Port Jervis by a man who was stalking the young woman riding in Kizer's car.

It's tempting to single out the tool used by the killer, or to point blame at violent video games and movies, or to trot out any other Twinkie defense you can imagine.

Murder is volitional. Murder happens because someone makes a decision to commit violence.